I. INTRODUCTION
English language is becoming a universal language for communication and science. In almost every country children and adults learn English language at schools, colleges and institutions. The ordinary pocket dictionaries are used by millions of students, tourists, and businessmen.
A pocket or a desk-top electronic dictionary will be a very handy means, and a powerful educational tool, especially if it is provided with ability to pronounce words. With the recent advent of the electronic components it is now possible to store larger amounts of information in very tiny chips. In fact, the chip density of solid state memories is doubled almost every year. With simple calculation, it is not difficult to forecast that by 1986, it will be possible to store a half million characters on a single chip solid state memory.
This invention describes an electronic talking dictionary which can be used in general to translate language 1 to language 2, and/or language 2 to language 1; or language 1 to language 1. In this preferred embodiment, we describe the details of an English-Arabic, Arabic-English version. The invention has a considerable market in the Middle East as well as all over the world as hundreds of millions of muslims learn the basics of the arabic language as part of their religion. The device also has potential market in U.S.A. and Europe as hundreds of thousands travel every year to the Middle East for tourism or business missions.
Recently, new types of electronic dictionaries have been proposed which perform essentially word or sentence translation, e.g., Yanaguichi et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,438,505; Morimoto et al. U.S. Pat. No. 4,417,319; and Levy U.S. Pat. No. 4,218,760. The invention presented here discloses unique and essential features not available in any of the above mentioned patents. The invention discloses word and sentence pronunciation capability based on Linear Prediction Coding of speech in which the allophone strings of words are stored in memory in memory files or generated by programmed pronunciation rules. This feature enables the user to initiate word search based on hearing a word without having to know its spelling. The invention discloses an input means which eliminates the need for a full Alphabetic Keyboard which confuses even the experts especially for multi-language keyboards as it is the case with the above-mentioned inventions. Levy's patent describes a multi-function 33 key keyboard, Morimoto's invention is based on a 60 key panel with multiple labels and functions. Yanaguichi's patent utilizes 26 keys. Our invention requires basically 4 keys for word/sentence selection, a key to initiate translation, and a 6th key to initiate pronunciation. This feature is a breakthrough in simplifying the method of operation and makes it feasible for pocketsize or even in watch products. The plug-in modules utilized by our invention are merely dummy solid state read only memories, thus, the device does not require expensive intelligent modules as in the Levy patent. Our invention discloses a display means and a storage means to identify and categorize a given word as whether it is feminine, masculine, singular, double, plural, noun, pronoun, adjective, root, verb, tense of verb, etc. This feature is essential in some languages as French, Arabic, and Arabic-like languages as Urdu and Persian. Finally, the invention is designed to meet the particular requirements of the script and phonetics of the Arabic languages (Arabic, Urdu, and Persian). Arabic language is spoken by 18 countries in the Middle East, Urdu is spoken by about 350 million in Pakistan and Northern India, Persian is spoken by about 60 millions in Iran and Central Asia. The Arabic languages are similar to the French language in the sense that "modifiers" or "accents" as shown in Table 4 over or under letters modify the pronunciation of words and their meaning. Hence, these modifiers should be shown for proper identification of words, and their translation. The Arabic text is always written from right to left in a connected form. Writing in discreet letters (as in English or Latin languages) is totally not acceptable. Accordingly, the Arabic letters may take different forms depending on their position in a word. Moreover, the Arabic letters are graphic type, and cannot be accommodated in a multi-segment display. Even fixed size dot matrixes sabotage the symmetry of the Arabic letter and produce poor quality font. The invention discloses a variable width character generator dot matrices means to generate the Arabic letters. This technique treats automatically the fixed size dot matrices as a special case. The synthesis of the sound of the words is based on sets of allophones and syllables stored using the Linear Prediction Coding method. The invention may utilize language pronunciation rules to generate the allophone/syllables string from the string of the letters-code of words.
In fact, the pronunciation of the Arabic language follows very well-defined rules. By following only a few of these rules, the sound of most of the Arabic words can be generated from the string of the letter/modifier characters code. Our invention utilizes this fact to reduce the amount of memory required to store the sound code of Arabic words. The Arabic language is also a structured language. Almost every original Arabic word is derived from a 3 or 4 letter root. No root in the Arabic language may consist of less than 3 or more than 4 letters. The extracts are formed according to a well-defined set of formats. The invention helps the user to find the roots, as well as the popular extracts of some root words. The hardware and firmware are designed in such a way that the device adapts itself to different possible operating modes, depending on a plug-in memory module. A plug-in memory module contains look-up tables and data files, and parameters to condition the device. The device may thus operate in one of the modes in Table 1.